Posts by Charles Manning 3509 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jun 2007
Who would run a Yawho ad-serving platform on their mobile device?
It makes sense to run Google stuff on an Android, because Google provides a whole fleet of mobile serves and on ithingy Apple (+ Google Maps + search) provides everything.
Where exactly is there a mobile niche for yahoo to step into?
Of course Yahoo could make their own mobile OS in competition with Android, but who would back that?
There is certainly some sense in throwing these curiosities to the press to keep the program in the news and thereby prop up funding.
No doubt there is much going on behind the scenes that fails to interest the common man and therefore does not get into the media.
These formations happen when one type of rock (typically igneous) exists in another type of rock. On earth it is common to find these where igneous (volcanic) rock is forced through sedimentary rocks.
People often think of evolution acting gradually and linearly. I really does not happen that way at all.
One of the interesting things that came out of genetic algorithms (eg. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0 at 8:08) is that the evolution tends to work in "ages" during which there is slow evolution and transition between the ages during which there is fast evolution.
During an 'age" you could likely reproduce with a near relative (eg. you could happily reproduce with someone from 5000 years - 250 generations - back), but at the transitions you would not be able to go back so far (eg perhaps only 20 or 50 generations).
any more than changing an oil filter is science.
Both brain surgery and car engine manufacturing are the result of science, but neither is science in itself.
The mechanic changing oil is following a procedure: check oil, remove plug,...
The surgeon is following a procedure too: look, cut hole...
What a coctail of bollocks.
Contrary to popular belief - particularly amongst the armchair militia - hitting people is not that easy even at short range. Even if you have some skill on the range, it is quite a different matter responding to real evens and a hopped up moving target.
Why does whipping out imply she was carrying the .38? From being in bed I could get a firearm out of a gunsafe (in a different room) and loaded within 15 seconds - much faster than it would take to crack one off.
The Trayvon Martin murder case is vastly different. In this case the person was inside the house and an obvious threat with no option to just back down and walk away.
This has nothing at all to do with the Stand Your Ground law.
There are many people thinking that Microsoft should be given a chance to prove themselves with W8 and catch up.
These people forget that W8 is not Microsoft's entry into this market place. MS have been making smart phone OSs since 2001 (ie. almost 12 years).
That is double the time Apple has been in the business and and nearly triple the time Google has been in the business.
Microsoft does not need time to be competitive, it needs to race with other intellectually disabled companies.
NIWA (our very green-slanting climate botherers) crowed that the 2000-2009 decade was hotter than the 1990-1999 decade. Read past he headlines and it was up by a whole hundredth of a degree.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt (ie. that they used an apples-for-apples comparison), one hundredth of a degree over ten years is a difference of 30 degree days. One cold front would have changed the result.
Statistical significance and science left the building a long time ago. There are only ideologists left.
Smartphones and tablets can keep selling because new generations have new features/functions which the readers find desirable.
A Kindle, OTOH, does one thing pretty well: it renders text as a book replacement. It has a long battery life. Once you have one, you're very unlikely to buy a replacement. What for?
If you wanted new functions (games, moveis etc) you're more likely to go for a tablet - you will however miss the battery life if you toss out the Kindle.
Pretty much the same holds for candybar phones. Why would you upgrade to the latest candybar phone?
That pretty much leads to market saturation for these products. Once everyone that wants one has one, there is no further demand.
Intel are really hyping up their mobile chipsets which are not likely to crack through the ARM barrier.
When you screw up, Wall St forces you to do something. That is often a strong call to focus on core competence. In the past this has caused Intel to dump their embedded processors (8051, 960...), their StrongARM/XScale stuff - sold to Marvel, their flash business unit, etc etc.
Likely 2014 will see them being forced to focus on PCs and servers and forget their mobile chipsets.
Currently very few kids are really exposed to CS at school. It is improving, but is nowhere near being there yet. There have been some interesting developments of late, but unfortunately it will take some while to train up teachers.
The problem with leading kids to CS via ICT is that they are very different skill sets with very different aptitudes. Knowing how to wiggle a mouse or make a spreadsheet is no indication of whether you'll be any good at programming. Far too many kids end up in CS because they think they're so hot at updating their Facebook profile that they *must* be good at anything to do with computers. No wonder then that 1st year CS tends to have a very high failure rate.
The majority of people will never need to install an OS. Nor do maintenance. If anything these needs are decreasing with the upsurge of mobile devices.
ICT (computer usage) needs to be separated from CS (programming etc) just like baking needs to be separated from chemistry,
Statistical significance for physics is very different than for "soft science" (biology, geology,....). The soft sciences are far less rigorous than physics.
Physics **hates** to use statistics at all. Any use of statistics in physics just reduces rigor. That's why, when it is used, they demand lots of 9s.
If 1000 bricks were thrown into the air and 999 of them fell to the ground but one hovered in the air, the physicist would have severe doubts about gravity. 99.9% is not enough.
Soft sciences will accept far lower thresholds. For example, we routinely accept that smoking causes cancer when many smokers die of other causes.
What is important is recognizing levels of confidence. Sigmas etc are routinely cut from reporting because the journalists and public just don't understand them.
Those upper 20% are desperately trying to not be served with any products tainted with "emerging market" stigmas. They will want the same hipster toys the Westerners have. Apple/Samsung etc. If a product can't fly in the West, then it won't fly for these people.
The bottom/middle end are well served by existing cheaper ARM chipsets with all the capability to serve the bottom end.
Where is the gaping market opening that a huge organisation like Intel can find a toe hold?
"Intel is probably going to do far more for the developing world..." They're just trying to do a small part of what Huawei et al are already doing,
Intel have tried to scale this mountain many times before and have not succeeded. The market and competitors are now both a lot tougher. There is nothing in this new Intel offering that is enough to change the game.
Intel have never really understood low-margin chipsets so it is a huge corporate struggle to try to find a way to make any money in cash-strapped emerging markets. Even Nokia - cranking out billions of candy-bar phones - struggled to make a profit.
I think Intel misread the market quite badly. When you have absolutely nothing, then what a westerner might call substandard is pretty bloody fancy and high spec video over cellular is an expensive luxury.
That surely means the less-than-hottest specced parts will still rule in emerging markets because the prices are unbelievably low and Intel, yet again, will fail to ship into this market.
But what do I know? I only lived in the 3rd world for 30 years. Perhaps Mike Bell has a better understanding than I do and understands the market better.
Wind up lights are far better. For the same price - or even less - you can get a clockwork lights that are portable and thus more useful.
I expect 99% of the commentards here have never lived for extended periods using 3rd world lighting. I have.
Rule number 1 is that you don't try to light up a whole building. If you need to go to another room then you take the light with you. That means you need a portable light. A device with bags of rocks is not at all portable.
But it is British!... whatever that means.
In the past, MS phones have always done best in business where there has been a reasonably compelling story to sell "seamless integration" from corporate servers to mobile platforms/
W8 is unashamedly aimed squarely at the consumer as a social media phone. It is Kin2. In this market they need to compete with "cool" something they have never done right.
Corporate customers will want to keep their PCs on W7 and are not feeling the need to go with W8, but in mobile it is worse - there is no compelling MS choice. MS are, for all practical purposes, forcing their corporate customers to shop around and stop drinking the MS Kool-Aid.
Microsoft have completely cut off their traditional markets at the knees and are betting on a switch to consumers. This is a very high risk strategy and depends on everything being nearly perfect.
This must surely accelerate MS's demise.
All these predictions have one fatal flaw: they make predictions based on the current state of the world and fail to recognise that people and technologies change all the time.
By 2050 Chinese will have all the aspirations of living in a clean world etc that westerners have now.
If the CO2/climate problems still stack up, the Chinese will be self moderating and will be putting huge effort into R&D.
It is absurd to think that the Chinese economy & industry will continue to grow at current rates forever. There are already signs of slowdown and signs that Chinese people want to have better environmental quality etc.
Targeting the processing capability of an insect would be more useful.
A fly or a bee is incredibly capable when compared with a robot. Achieving fly-like capability in robotics would be quite remarkable.
But no doubt funding etc come into play. It is going to be hard to attract funding to replicate a fly brain. So instead AI chases rainbows like we have been for the last 60 years....
It is so much fun antagonizing the stupid people. Why does NASA have to go spoil all the fun?
But then again NASA's claims are bigger than their capability. Asteroid 2011 MD was only spotted when it was 4 days out. We'll have to wait until 18th Dec to be sure...
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bus-sized-asteroid-barely-misses-hitting-earth/story?id=13940409
Before becoming self employed I would often get involved in the process of interviewing grads.
I never looked at grades. What I looked for was whether or not the people had that little bit extra to go out of their way to learn real stuff - not just get As.
The guy with a row of Bs but who had also significantly contributed to some open source project (or whatever) was far more likely to get hired than the guy who had all A's but was so focussed on getting As that he knew absolutely nothing outside of his course material.
People were spurred on to get W7 because Vista still had the smell of shit about it - even when most of the problems were probably sorted. That gave W7 an artificial boost.
W8 is an entirely different matter. Many people fearing W8 bought a W7 machine while they could.
I did that. I needed a new PC which runs dual-booted Linux most of the time. But from time to time I need to use some utility or other that only comes on WIndows. I know they work on W7 and with all the changes in W8 I was not so sure... so I bought a PC early.
Once you have residence then you have exactly the same hurdles as a boat person with residence to get citizenship.
Why should anyone have a problem with this? Rich people and those with skills build the value of the country and everyone gains. Just opening the doors to unskilled poor people doesn't help anyone.
"But they benefit from their products and care".
Companies don't benefit from anything. Only the stake holders (shareholders and employees) benefit.
Those pro company tax seem to be trying to tax "rich fat cat" company owners, forgetting that they will be getting taxed when they draw dividends from the company.
But they miss the fact that company tax reduces jobs so also in effect taxes the employees too.
If you really want to punish the "fat cat" company owners then just increase the high earner tax rate. tThat makes far more sense.
You can imagine the kids losing sleep homing that the parents put a Kinect under the Christmas tree to enliven their XBox experience. And parents would like the kids to get some exercise while they play games.
How many kids are going to lose sleep hoping there's a Win8 DVD under the tree?
What flavour of fuckwit would give a downvote for that comment?
I spent 3 years working for a company making computer telephony kit and can assure you that this is correct. Detecting DTMF button presses and other channel monitoring is way cheaper than voice recognition. Thus all calls will typically constantly have DTMF enabled but voice recognition will often only be attached when required.
If there are excess voice recognition resources available they might be hooked to waiting calls, but as the parent says, don't count on it.
Here on Planet Earth, there are many warm winds that will cause warming of greater than 25 degrees. These winds come by various names: foehn, Chinook, Berg, North Wester etc.
These all involve two factors: mountains - which Mars has - and precipitation - which Mars would seem to lack.
That really makes it hard to attempt any like-for-like comparisons between Mars and Earth.
Why send a meatsack to do a robot's job?
Sure you want a person there if you're making a political statement or trying to make good TV (playing golf etc), but when it comes to doing science the robots can do it as well - or even better - for less money.
About the only win in sending a man to the moon in the 60s was that it beat the Russians at something.
Are they really making use of something that would previously have gone to waste? If MS wasn't using it in their data centre the power could be used for other purposes.
Poo powered leccy is nothing new and is often put back into the grid. For example, the Christchurch (NZ) waste water treatment plant generates enough electricity for its whole operation plus a surplus.
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